- light," with "inwrought couches," whereon reclining, "aye-blooming
youths" are to bring them "flowing wine" of the best celestial vintage. They are to enjoy their favorite fruits, and to eat whatever birds they long for. "Houris with large dark eyes," and "ever virgins," never growing old, are to supply them with the pleasures of love, so strangely overlooked in the Christian pictures of heavenly life. On the other side, we have "the people of the left hand," who are to be tormented with "pestilential winds" and "scalding water," and are to live "in the shadow of a black smoke," with the fruit of a bitter tree to eat and boiling water to drink (K., p. 60.—Sura, 56). The prophet delights in warning his enemies of their coming fate. "Verily," says God in another place, "we have got ready the flame for the infidel" (K., p. 598.—Sura, 48. 13). "O Prophet!" we read elsewhere, "make war on the infidels and hypocrites, and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their abode! and wretched the passage to it!" (K., p. 606.—Sura, 66 9). "God promiseth the hypocritical men and women, and the unbelievers, the fire of hell—therein shall they abide—this their sufficing portion!" (K., p. 621.—Sura, 9, 69). Some, who had declined to march with the Prophet from Medina on account of the heat, are sternly reminded that "a fiercer heat will be the fire of hell" (K., p. 623.—Sura, 9. 82).
In contradistinction to the deplorable state of the hypocrites and unbelievers—blind in this world and destined to suffer eternally in the next—we have a pleasing picture of the condition of the faithful Moslems:—
"Muhammed is the apostle of God; and his comrades are vehement
against the infidels, but full of tenderness among themselves. Thou
mayst see them bowing down, prostrating themselves, imploring favors
from God, and his acceptance. Their tokens are on their faces, the
marks of their prostrations. This is their picture in the Law and their
picture in the Evangel; they are as the seed which putteth forth its
stalk; then strengtheneth it, and it groweth stout, and riseth upon its
stem, rejoicing the husbandman—that the infidels may be wrathful at
them. To such of them as believe and do the things that are right, hath
God promised forgiveness and a noble recompense" (K., p. 601.—Sura,
48. 29).
